Graphics: The Monstrous Orchid

Flippant Victorians parodied his name as
Weirdsley Daubery or Awfly Weirdly. For the art of Aubrey Vincent
Beardsley, whose sinuous draftsmanship fluttered through the pages of
the 1890s farthest-out books, was the scandalous titillation of his
day. He seemed to have dipped his pen in laudanum and night shade; his
dark silhouettes fairly rippled with overtressed vixens, leering harle
quins and glinting grotesques.

Beardsley was decadent and dainty, the epitome of the late-Victorian
dandyism that prized artificiality over nature. It is a pity that he
never used mauve ink. Oscar Wilde once paid him the compliment of
calling him "a monstrous...